Sr data from the largest war horse burial in Western Europe - the Borgharen mass grave

Abstract

This dataset comprises strontium isotope ratios (87Sr/86Sr) from 11 horses excavated at Borgharen-Daalderveld-Pasestraat, north of Maastricht, in 2010. The horses were discovered together in a mass grave, the largest ever found in Western Europe to date (N=69); an exceptional find that immediately raised questions about their origin. Although initially thought to date 1794, the year in which the French revolutionaries laid siege to Maastricht, new archaeological and historical research has shown that the animals actually died more than a century earlier in 1673, during the French siege of Maastricht in which d’Artagnan was killed. In the near proximity of the site, human remains dating to the Migration period (early Medieval) were recovered. The Sr data of six of them are included in this dataset as well.

Keywords

• mass grave
• horse
• medieval
• migration period
• strontium
• mobility